I'd had it in my mind that a drive with more than 3 platters would be statistically less reliable. Is that the case for modern drives? Would then this likely be a more reliable 3TB drive? That's assuming the very high platter density isn't itself unreliable.

(I'm not rushing out to buy any drives these days. The shortages will presumably be with us for some number of months.)

I had four of these drives in use and they seem very noisy to me. In fact when I shutdown the computer they make this troubling whining noise. In use they sound a little like popcorn popper.

Hmmm. Hard to reconcile that with SPCR statement that "The Barracuda 3TB was easily the quietest high capacity 7200 RPM drive we've tested, measuring 16 [email protected] when idle and 16~17 [email protected] when seeking. It emitted a very soft hum without so much as a hint of whine and the seeks were almost unnoticeable."

Bad sectors on a factory fresh drive are invisible to the user. They don't cause errors. Any errors are a result of either a soft (non-repeatable) write error or a new permanently bad sector.

Errors should be very rare on new drives. You generally only see errors on old drives which are failing. On the other hand, 3TB is a lot of data and the more data you write, the greater the chance of an error.

Just to clarify I had non recoverable bad sectors on two out of five drives, now that two of them have been replaced.Non recoverable bad sectors are when the drive has a bad sector that cannot be marked as bad and spare used to replace it.

I am not using these in raid.

The sound I hear with the new drives is I guess when it is parking the heads during no use or at power off, it is very noticeable.

I use these in HTPC or USB 3.0 external enclosure, so they are low usage drives, which makes the failure rate of 2 out of 5 seem a even worse. The last drive received was manufactured in China, the previous 4 from Thailand so maybe that will make a difference.

Newegg has this on sale today. I was going to use my older WD 640GB Blue in a new build (secondary drive behind a SSD). Can I compare the noise level tests for that test http://www.silentpcreview.com/article847-page3.html, at that time to the current tests?

The noise floor of the testing area back then was 17 dBA. Now, it's 10-11 dBA and some of the equipment is different/better. So, the seek noise of 22 dBA for the WD 640 Blue back then would probably translate to something slightly less than 22 dBA if tested today.

Empirically, it is a very quiet 7200rpm drive so I wouldn't worry. It has a low hum which is quite hard to hear. No buzzing or grinding noises. The only drive I would consider getting instead is the Caviar Red but it is usually more expensive.

I just bought this HDD in order to replace a Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB and a Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C 1TB, because they were quite high on the power on counts, with 42K and 30K hours respectively, and also because they created a beat frequency when powered on, and seemed to make my Windows 7 Pro 64-bit bug when shutting down the PC, as I use the option to turn off HDDs after 1 minute of inactivity.

To be fair, I'm not 100% sure my Seagate Barracuda 3TB is the same version as the one tested, as it's a STD3000DM001-1CH166 according to CrystalDiskInfo. But my observations are that it emits a very-high pitch noise when powered on, probably some noise associated to the spindles spinning ; I tried to get a sound spectrum with my headset's mic and UltimateSound 2, but it's hard to pinpoint what's the whistling I can hear. Here are the spectrums I get with the microphone (for which I don't know the frequency response) touching the front bottom of my PC when idle, with the HDD writing some data though that doesn't affect the whistling :

Attachment:

spectrum%201.png

The first spectrum is from 0 to 1391.6 Hz.

Attachment:

spectrum%202.png

The second one is from 0 to 22265 Hz.

The biggest peak, that is highly visible on the first figure, is the HDD's rotation speed at 120 Hz. The remainder of the spectrum seems to be some broadband noise, but for some reason, my ears can hear that high-pitch whistling. I should remark that this whistling is probably not disturbing for most people ; it's less than the whining my TV does when turned on. And while it does make more noise than the PC's fans and watercooling when idle, those are 1 140mm fan at around 500rpm, 2 120mm fans at around 500-700 rpm, 2 80mm fans at around 1000 rpm, and a Corsair H90, which does make a slight ticking noise caused by some air bubbles, all placed in a Corsair Carbide 300R recovered with a decent amount of soundproofing material, especially around the HDD cage.

The bottom line is while this HDD is probably one of the quietest 7200 rpm HDDs on the market, it does produce some high-pitch whistling that can disturb people highly sensitive to high-frequency noise.

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fyi... A lot of what people hear as very high pitched whining turns out to be relatively low in frequency, often below the highest note on a piano (~4khz). One way to determine the frequency of the noise is to try and match its pitch with a music instrument -- if you have a piano, electronic organ, whatever, play notes to match the pitch. Just for an exercise in curiosity if nothing else.

Thanks for the tips ; here are the spectrums with Audacity, same position for the microphone :

HDD powered on :

Attachment:

spectrum1.png

HDD powered off :

Attachment:

spectrum2.png

The HDD adds essentially 4 peaks and some broadband noise ; those peaks are at approx. 2.38kHz, 3.46kHz, 4.27kHz and 4.53kHz. Also note that the tail of the spectrum ends at 7.2kHz with the HDD off, and 8.9kHz with the HDD on.

The 2 first peaks seem to match those from the review, but not too sure about the last 2 :

Also note the microphone's position is different from the SPCR's HDD testing methodology ; if you watch the HDD from the side with the connectors, the microphone is about 8cm to the left, the HDD being horizontal, and with a 140mm fan and the front bezel between the mic and the HDD.

Another remark ; the HDD sled from the Corsair Carbide 300R isn't used "as is", as there are some slightly loose tolerances between the sled and the HDD cage, which could potentially amplify the HDD's vibrations ; the HDD has been tightly screwed to the sled and the sled's hollows on the side have been (over)filled with some strips cut from a polyurethane foam sheet and covered with some duct tape, which makes for a tighter fit with the HDD cage and absorbs some vibrations.

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The obvious reason for the steep downslope of your curves is the mic touching the chassis -- it's vibration conduction. Don't let the mic touch anything. Ours floats in an elastic suspension, which is pretty standard for mics.

The peaks would in the first curve would certainly be audible. Hard to tell which one iis the one that bothers you, but you could find out -- by float-mounting the HDD w/ elastic in the top optical drive cage & then putting a flat dense piece of rubber atop the drive & listening & looking for changes in the spectrum. The sound/peak that drops when you place the rubber piece on might help identify which peak it is. OTOH, if all the peaks reduce & the sound becomes nicer for you... well, then mission accomplished, right?

The whining you hear could be coming not directly from the drive but by some higher harmonic of a part in the chassis being stimulated by the HDD's vibrations, so the HDD suspension could eliminate altogether.

I have had success reducing HDD noise with things as simple as place a large, preferably heavy eraser (or similar block of rubber) atop a normally mounted drive, or applying just a small amount of pressure on such an eraser.

Here are the new spectrums made with the mic a few centimeters away from the front bezel's logo, with no contact.

HDD on :

Attachment:

spectrum 1.png

HDD off :

Attachment:

spectrum 2.png

So there's quite a difference in the noise spectrum of my PC when the HDD is on, though I'm not completely sure if the spectrum above 7 kHz is the whistling that disturbs me, as those high-frequency peaks are 10-15 dB (according to the microphone, whose frequency response isn't known) below the other ones.

When I'll have some spare time, I'll remove the HDD from the tower and measure new spectrums to conclude if the chassis is the culprit.

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